Monday, April 8, 2013

The old school liked what it saw- voluptuous one....
Below is an ancient Egyptian poem, citing admiration for "generous" and alluring female curves. The steagpypic figurines below are from the ancient Badarians, a key people that laid the foundation for the dynastic civilization. Anthropological analyses of crania and limb data cluster them more with African popuations further south, than Europeans or Middle Easterners.

Source: Ancient Egyptian Literature—A Book of Readings, Volume II: The New Kingdom, translated by Miriam Lichtheim. The University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 1976. pages 182-193.

'Sister Without Peer'

Look, she is like a star goddess arising
at the beginning of a happy new year;
brilliantly shining, bright skin;
with beautiful eyes for looking,
with sweet lips for speaking;
she has not one phrase too many.
With a long neck and shining breast,
her hair of genuine lapis lazuli;
her arm more brilliant than gold;
her fingers like lotus flowers,
with heavy buttocks and girt waist.

Her legs parade her beauty;
With graceful step she treads the ground,
Captures my heart by her movements.
She causes all men's necks
To turn about to see her;

Joy has he whom she embraces,
He is like the first of men!
When she steps outside she seems
Like that the Sun!

'How well She Knows to Cast the Noose'

How well she knows to cast the noose,
And yet not pay the cattle tax!
She casts the noose on me with her hair,
She captures me with her eye;
She curbs me with her necklace,
She brands me with her seal ring.
She smites me when she shakes her buttocks.

The ancient Badarians were quite representative of ancient Egyptians as a whole and showed clear links with tropical Africans to the south. They have been sometimes excluded in studies of the ancient Egyptian population, which shows continuity in its history, not mass influxes of foreigners until the late periods. Data from modern scholars- quote:

Drag mouse across picture for a larger view..

"As a result of their facial prognathism, the Badarian sample has been described as forming a morphological cluster with Nubian, Tigrean, and other southern (or \Negroid") groups (Morant, 1935, 1937; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Nutter, 1958, Strouhal, 1971; Angel, 1972; Keita, 1990). Cranial nonmetric trait studies have found this group to be similar to other Egyptians, including much later material (Berry and Berry, 1967, 1972), but also to be significantly different from LPD material (Berry et al., 1967). Similarly, the study of dental nonmetric traits has suggested that the Badarian population is at the centroid of Egyptian dental samples (Irish, 2006), thereby suggesting similarity and hence continuity across Egyptian time periods. From the central location of the Badarian samples in Figure 2, the current study finds the Badarian to be relatively morphologically close to the centroid of all the Egyptian samples. The Badarian have been shown to exhibit greatest morphological similarity with the temporally successive EPD (Table 5).

Finally, the biological distinctiveness of the Badarian from other Egyptian samples has also been demonstrated (Tables 6 and 7). These results suggest that the EDyn do form a distinct morphological pattern. Their overlap with other Egyptian samples (in PC space, Fig. 2) suggests that although their morphology is distinctive, the pattern does overlap with the other time periods. These results therefore do not support the Petrie concept of a \Dynastic race" (Petrie, 1939; Derry, 1956). Instead, the results suggest that the Egyptian state was not the product of mass movement of populations into the Egyptian Nile region, but rather that it was the result of primarily indigenous development combined with prolonged small-scale migration, potentially from trade, military, or other contacts.
This evidence suggests that the process of state formation itself may have been mainly an indigenous process, but that it may have occurred in association with in-migration to the Abydos region of the Nile Valley. This potential in-migration may have occurred particularly during the EDyn and OK. A possible explanation is that the Egyptian state formed through increasing control of trade and raw materials, or due to military actions, potentially associated with the use of the Nile Valley as a corridor for prolonged small scale movements through the desert environment.

--(Sonia R. Zakrzewski. (2007). Population Continuity or Population Change: Formation of the Ancient Egyptian State. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 132:501-509)

and

"An examination of the distance hierarchies reveals the Badarian series to be more similar to the Teita in both analyses and always more similar to all of the African series than to the Norse and Berg groups (see Tables 3A & 3B and Figure 2). Essentially equal similarity is found with the Zalavar and Dogon series in the 11-variable analysis and with these and the Bushman in the one using 15 variables. The Badarian series clusters with the tropical African groups no matter which algorithm is employed (see Figures 3 and 4).. In none of them did the Badarian sample affiliate with the European series."

Sunday, April 7, 2013

PHARAOH ROUNDUP/RECAPSeveral ancient Egyptian pharaohs show some African DNA markers or cranial/skeletal markers. Some Late Period Egyptian samples cannot be considered typically Egyptian.

[b]Pharonic limb proportion data - several cluster with Africans[/b]

"It can be seen that all the pharonic values, including those of 'Smakhare', lie much closer to the negro curve than to the white curve. Since stature equations only work satisfactorily in the individuals to whom they have applied have similar proportions to the population group from which they are derived, this provides justification for using negro equations for estimating stature from single bones of the New Kingdom pharoahs, renforcing the previous findings of Robins (1983). Furthermore, the Troller and Gleser white equations for the femur, tibia and humerus yield stature values that have a much wider spread than those from negro equations with mean values that are unacceptably large."

--Robins and Schute. The Physical Proportions and Stature
of New Kingdom Pharaohs," Journal of Human Evolution 12
(1983), 455-465

and

[quote]

"Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute(1983) have shown that more consistentresults are obtained from ancientEgyptian male skeletons if Trotter &Gleser formulae for negro are used,rather than those for whites which havealways been applied in the past. .. theirphysical proportions were more likemodern negroes than those of modernwhites, with limbs that were relativelylong compared with the trunk, and distalsegments that were long compared withthe proximal segments. If ancientEgyptian males had what may be termednegroid proportions, it seems reasonablethat females did likewise."
From:
(Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986.
Predynastic Egyptian stature and
physical proportions. Hum Evol
1:313–324. Ruff CB. 1994.)

"Estimates of living stature, based onX-ray measurements applied to theTrotter & Gleser (1958) negro equationsfor the femur, tibia and humerus, havebeen made for ancient Egyptian kingsbelonging to the 18th and 19th dynasties.The corresponding equations for whitesgive values for stature that areunsatisfactorily high. The view thatThutmose III was excessively short isproved to be a myth. It is shown that thelimbs of the pharaohs, like those of otherAncient Egyptians, had negroidcharacteristics, in that the distalsegments were relatively long incomparison with the proximal segments.An exception was Ramesses II, whoappears to have had short legs below theknees."

--Robins and Schute. The Physical
Proportions and Stature of New
Kingdom Pharaohs," Journal of Human
Evolution 12 (1983)[url=http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com].[/Url] 455-465

-----------------------------------------------

[b]Profile on the Nile[/b]

[i]"Genetic kinship analyses revealed identical haplotypes in both mummies (table 1); using the Whit Athey’s haplogroup predictor, we determined the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a. The testing of polymorphic autosomal microsatellite loci provided similar results in at least one allele of each marker (table 2)."[/i]
--Hawass et al 2012. Revisiting the harem conspiracy and death of Ramesses III. British Medical Journal, BMJ2012;345:e8268

[b]Haplogroup E1b1a (now known as E-M2) is an
African DNA group, most commonly found in sub-Saharan Africa[/b] QUOTE:

"[i]Haplogroup E1b1 now contains two basal branches, E-V38 (E1b1a) and E-M215 (E1b1b), with V38/V100 joining the two previously separated lineages E-M2 (former E1b1a) and E-M329 (former E1b1c). Each of these two lineages has a peculiar geographic distribution. E-M2 is the most common haplogroup in sub-Saharan Africa, with frequency peaks in western (about 80%) and central Africa (about 60%)."[/i]

[b]DNA Tribes roundup - today's Arabized Egyptians are not the same as the ancients[/b]

Several ancient Egyptian pharaohs show some African DNA markers or cranial/skeletal markers

[b]Some Late Period Egyptian samples cannot be considered typically Egyptian [/b]

"Most dramatically, the results also indicate that the Egyptian series from Howells global data set are morphologically distinct from the Predynastic and Eatly Dynastic Nile Valley samples (especially in cranial vault shape and height), and thus show that this sample cannot be considered to be a typical Egyptian series." --Zakrewski, S. (2004) "Intra-population and temporal variation in ancient Egyptian crania."

Close pharaonic links with Nubia- several pharaohs were Nubian background long BEFORE the 25th Dynasty as conservative mainstream Egyptologists note- QUOTE:

[i]"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region.4 As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne... Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies." [/i]
-- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5,

[i] "Among the foreigners, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians. In the late predynastic period (c. 3700-3150 B.C.E.), the Nubians shared the same culture as the Egyptians and even evolved the same pharaonic political structure."[/i]
- -(F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)